


Regret and Redeem

by fandumbandflummery



Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Gen, Past Relationship(s), two battered old Mandos who need love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-22 02:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11370537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandumbandflummery/pseuds/fandumbandflummery
Summary: Fenn shook his head, watching the bonfire's flames dance up into the night sky as he sipped his drink. If he'd been able to tell himself twenty-three years earlier that one day he'd be drinking net'ra with and willingly charging into battle alongside an infamous Death Watch officer he'd have thought first that his future self was a right old jehaar and then that the Galaxy itself had turned on its head.





	Regret and Redeem

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since the season 4 trailer for Rebels, this pairing has been on my mind. I can’t quite say why, but I’ll definitely be writing more.

Fenn gazes out on the makeshift village stretched out to the pyramids on the horizon. Hundreds of warriors in all, armour glinting on the figures around bonfires, perched on the hulls of landed kom'rk ships, or lingering outside the tents and shelters built for lack of space in the Yavin temples. All of them joking and chatting, not caring a damn if they are vets or youths, if they were chieftains or bounty hunters, ranked or common, if their armour is blue and black or grey and gold or neither. Mando'ade united at last in a common goal of liberating their ancient home from a tyrannical power. 

Yet it does not comfort him one bit. 

For all that the assault on Sundari will be made much more powerful and hopefully more decisive with the triple-headed alliance of the Wrens, the Phoenix Squadron, and the Nite Owls, Fenn can't shake the feeling of dread gathering in his stomach. 

Of course, he was a Mando warrior. A veteran of more battles and skirmishes than there were clans in all known space, sole survivor of the massacre of his homeworld. A pilot who'd pulled off maneuvers the likes of would've made the most exacting Imperial flight instructor swoon in a dead faint. By all rights he should be taking the impending massive assault on an occupied world already festering with civil war and bloodshed like a light spring breeze. 

But it could also very well be the end of everything and everyone he knew, and of himself as well. 

Black ale and company, despite their time-honoured reputation as cures for dark moods, were proving to be far less effective on him than usual. Somehow they only made it worse, especially when the company took the form of Bo-Katan Kryze. 

Fenn shook his head, watching the bonfire's flames dance up into the night sky as he sipped his drink. If he'd been able to tell himself twenty-three years earlier that one day he'd be drinking net'ra with and willingly charging into battle alongside an infamous Death Watch officer he'd have thought first that his future self was a right old jehaar and then that the Galaxy itself had turned on its head. 

Well, the galaxy had turned on its head several times since and inside out for good measure. And the infamous Bo-Katan had dropped down next to him by his small fire on the fringe of the camp, with two full tankards of ale in tow and while the last thing he wanted was to talk to well, anyone, it just would've been bad form to refuse her. 

And, while he wasn't quite up to admitting it openly, Fenn really was glad to see her again. 

Though their brief introduction at the height of the Siege of nearly twenty years past had been fraught with flared tempers and distrust, by the end of it all he'd begun to feel something of genuine respect and admiration for Bo-Katan. Even if - somewhat disconcertingly to him - she seemed to be *enjoying* the carnage she wrought on the traitorous Mandalorians and the army of thugs that Maul had marshalled. He'd forgotten that aspect of her, the irreverent, eternally high spirit that singled her out among ranks of stone-faced veterans and wet-eared ikaade trying to look brave and serious.

Even now, she didn't seem the least bit concerned in the face of this new oncoming storm. 

"Nice, ain't it - seeing all these Mando'ade massed before a big raid," she muses aloud. 

"Kinda reminds me of the good old days." She leans back on her hands and stretches her legs out in front of the fire, helmet and tankard set to one side. 

"Our ideas of what the good old days entailed do probably differ a bit," Fenn replies. 

"Really now? What could possibly have changed, Rau," came the dry deadpan. 

"Generally the get-togethers on Concord Dawn had fewer fist-fights and non-fatal stabbings than what you've told me of your Deathwatch bonfires."

She laughs at this, high and loud in that way of hers that, even decades after the Siege, he remembers clearly, and Fenn can't suppress a smile. It was hard not to. Bo-Katan, it seemed, could inspire joy and laughter in her followers as passionately as she could inspire in them rage and battle-fury as easy as breathing. He knows he's was staring, but still can't turn away. Despite all the years of heartbreak and hardship that weighed down on her armoured shoulders, she didn't show it, on her face or in her posture. She was still as bright and full of pure shereshoy as ever. 

Just as beautiful, too. 

Fenn's face suddenly reddened, thankful for the low firelight to hide his blush. *Beautiful!* He'd hoped the tiny part of him that had mooned over her like a lovesick boy after she'd vanished from Sundari's smoking ruins would behave himself and stay silent. Apparently not. 

Fierfek. This would be so much easier if the leader of the last shard of the Death Watch was a grizzled, hulking brute with a face like the rough end of a strill's backside, and not a slim, deadly beauty with hair like flares off a red sun. Just his luck. He bites his tongue, staring into the fire for a while to clear his head. Unfortunately, Bo-Katan still felt like talking. 

"Fenn. Fenn! Hey, feet on the ground, Protector," she snaps her fingers in front of his face, making him jump and nearly drop his now-empty tankard, which he had been unconsciously nervously turning over in his hands. When the heck had he drained the thing?

"You looked like you were systems away." 

Fek. She'd noticed. 

"Just…nervous, a bit." 

"Heavy thoughts, eh?" 

"The fact that we could all be dead in a few rotations does rather weigh on my mind."

She chuckled, and Fenn's stomach did a turn that would've made a TIE pilot sick in his bucket. 

"So much for the 'stare death in the face' reputation of the Mando'ade. But you always were a bit of a morbid one, Fenn."

"I am being serious, Bo-Katan," he half-growled.

"And so am I," she mumbles nonchalantly into the rim of her mug as she takes another swig.

Fenn frowns. He already wasn't having the greatest night, and had come out here for some solitude. Bo-Katan had already gotten in the way of that, and...something about her attitude, charming before but somehow infuriating now, makes something dark and angry rear itself up in him. Before he can take a breath, tell himself to calm the shab down and deal with his sudden burst of rage like an adult, he reaches across and knocks the drink clean out of her hand. 

"And you always seemed to treat war like it was about as important as a round of ciubikad, you- di'kut!" he snaps.

She starts backwards from him, face a confused mix of incredulity and anger. 

"Chakaar! Don't spill my ale-"

"To haran with the fucking ale!" he hisses, cutting her off. 

"Bo-Katan, this…operation, attack, suicide mission, whatever it is we're calling it - it isn't some Kyrt'sad raid on a rabble of drunken pirates or unarmed farmers, not another one of your mercenary jobs to brag to drunks in Nal Hutta bars - we are attacking the capital city of a planet crawling with Imperials and our own people who've betrayed us by remaining as their willing shock troops.  
"You and I both know they will sell their lives dearly for the Emperor, and we might carve through thousands of them only to see them reinforced from above, or worse, they'll cut us down before we even make a dent! The fate of every Mando'ade in the galaxy rests on this wether they storm the city gates with us or no, and the only option left to all of us if we fail is oblivion - life or death, victory or total annihilation!"

He's glaring, breathing hard, teeth clenched, fists balled at his side as if he expects her to lunge at him, yell at him, throw a punch and break his nose for this insult. And he would welcome the opportunity if she did, because wants to be mad at this wonderful, infuriating woman but he can't, and if she would just fucking hit him back he could STAY mad-

Bo-Katan meets his gaze again, but not with the legendary fury that makes her eyes blaze and her lips draw back in a snarl. She's breathing deeply, shaking a little, and her eyes seem misted, as if she's trying to hold back tears. 

She looks…hurt.

Uh oh. 

"You don't' think I don't know this, Fenn?" 

Fenn suddenly feels a wave of remorse wash over him, all his rage vanishing in an instant. She might have been annoying him but fierfek, all the words in all the Mando'a dialects could not describe just what a complete ass he'd just been. 

Of course she knew the direness, the hopelessness of it all. Bo-Katan had not only fought in the first Siege with him, but after all was done she'd still been forced to flee her home once more. She'd never had a chance at striking a deal with Saxon as he and his Protectors had done - the Viceroy never would have allowed a rival to live even under his watch in the halls of Sundari, and would have struck her head off even as she knelt in allegiance.   
While Fenn had been left alone, practically living an idyll on Concord Dawn, she'd been roving from world to world, taking work for credits as it came, eating scraps, forever on the run from the Empire - some days barely one step ahead of the viceroy's goons. But she had never stopped rallying warriors to the cause of a Mandalore free of Imperial chains. 

Just because she didn't show it did not mean she felt none of his fear all the same. 

"I'm- I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to snap like that," he mutters, apologetically. As if that could make up for it, like putting a single bacta strip over a sucking chest wound. 

Still, she blinks away the tears before they fall, meeting his eyes with such directness that he's almost forced to look away again. He notices her dropped tankard on the ground, and reaches for it, putting it back down carefully by her side. One can't turn down the smallest bit of help in this sort of situation.

"The thing is…Bo-Katan, the Siege was one of the most terrible engagements I have ever fought in. Yes, Mandalore was retaken, but half the men and women I had grown up with and fought alongside were killed during the occupation. Young warriors whose lives had barely started cut down before they could begin alongside veterans of tens of battles. I saw one of the greatest cities of our people very nearly burned to the ground," he pauses, glancing down at his boots scuffing the bare earth of Yavin, if only to not have what felt like his soul be bored into by her gaze. 

"And all for what? In the end, all it did was exchange a Sith tyrant for a Mandalorian one. And I think I can be forgiven for wondering some days which of them was worse." 

For a moment they simply sit there in silence, the wild noises of the jungle, the murmurs of their fellow Mandalorians, and the crackle of the distant fires the only sounds in the night air. 

"Well, if we're confessing dark secrets, I'll give you one of mine." 

A gauntleted hand gently touches his chin, and Fenn finds himself looking into those green, green eyes, and for the first time seeing something like fear in them. Bo-Katan suddenly retracts her hand, as if she were embarrassed by how forward the gesture seemed. Fenn cocks an eyebrow - remorse was something that seemed at odds with the inner woman. 

"For the longest time, I blamed myself for the Siege. I really thought it was all my fault - that I'd brought this down on our people. That all this might have been avoided if I'd just disobeyed Vizsla and shot that...monster the day we found him on that ruined ship," she spoke, voice oddly thick, as if she was about to cry. 

"Maul destroyed everything I dear held to my heart, and more besides. During the Siege, you knew I was fighting to save Mandalore, but helping to take him down…it really felt personal. I felt like if I could just defeat this one great evil, it'd make up for all the other terrible things I'd done," she paused, then went on, now sounding downright defeated. 

"So when it all went wrong, when Maul escaped, when the Republic troopers revolted, when Saxon took over with this Empire's backing…I wondered if it was some kind of judgement sent by the Manda on my life, for all the innocents' lives I'd taken - for Kalevala, for Taris, for Carlac. 

"I cried myself to sleep over it, on so many nights. It hurt even more for the confusion I was feeling - a part of me was so sure I deserved this. That it was a just punishment and that I shouldn't even dare to complain - but then there was that part of me that was still kriffin' sensible about mourning the loss of my home, my friends, my family, the man I loved…"

Fenn's eyes widened. Surely she didn't mean…he kept quiet. He wasn't here to comment on anyone's past romantic life. He tried to keep his expression neutral, and failed. She smirked, a strange contrast with the sadness in her eyes. 

"I might not be a jetii mind-reader like Sabine's little pal, but I know what you're thinking, Fenn," she sighed, and continued, not bothering to wait for his reply.

"And well, its true. Yes, I first served the Deathwatch cause out of principle against the Duchess's regime, and because I really believed it could resurrect the old Mandalore - I thought, how could we fail? We had the last true Vizsla son leading us with the blazing black sword, victory or death and all that. I think we were all in love with Pre, a little, or at least with what he stood for. 

"But after we had to flee Concordia, I realized it went far beyond just the chain of command between us. I guess I really did love him, and I might well have been the only person in the galaxy that he loved back. And…I saw a future, with us - rebuilding Mandalore's empire, together…giving it a ruling house that it deserved."

Fenn had no doubt as to exactly what that meant. Fek. He WAS an asshole. But to her credit, Bo-Katan was apparently in a forgiving mood, and didn't seem to mind, this time. 

"I had no...I can't imagine how you felt." Fenn trailed off. He couldn't quite bring himself to say he was sorry for the loss of one of Mandalore's most brutal, ruthless warlords in centuries. Amazingly, she just shrugs. 

"Devastating is the word that comes to mind. But I've had my time to mourn. I'll never forget what he meant to me, as the Mand'alor and as riduur, and I don't regret one moment of the time we had together. But it was over twenty years ago, now and I'm…well, I'm not the person I was then that I am now.

"The Death Watch had its time and its place, and its not now or here anymore. We can't erase the past, or pretend it didn't happen, or spend our days regretting the things we did," she pauses, fingers thoughtfully brushing the stylized convor's face on her helmet.

"I know that now. All we can do is move forward, try and right the mistakes, and do our best to keep it so that they don't get made ever again."

"Regret or redeem," Fenn muses. 

Bo-Katan nods. 

"It's the best that chakaaryk like me can do, really."

"Bo-Katan, don't say that-" but she cuts him off before he can finish.

"I'm serious, Fenn. I was living like a barbarian while you were doing all you could to preserve what Mandalore was truly meant to be - your Protectors resisted us in the Kyrt'sad so many times, and you never stopped fighting, even when you were in Saxon's ranks. You're a brave man, Fenn Rau, and more importantly you're a good one," she sighs, dejectedly looking down at her boots. 

"And you're maybe ten times the Mando I could ever hope to be. But as long as we've got people like you, we stand a fighting chance against the Empire - and anyone else who tries to take our world." 

"…thank you." he mutters. It's all he can manage, because well, what can one really say when given a sudden heartfelt confession by a not-enemy but also not-friend whom you haven't seen in almost two decades? 

They sit silently for a few long moments, watching the crackling, slowly dying fire. Still, Fenn senses something weighing down on the two of them, a blanket of tension like the pressure of an atmosphere. He has the feeling that this conversation is taking a turn into uncharted space, and he's not really sure how to navigate any further on. It's Bo-Katan who finally breaks the silence.

"I've tried not to regret much in my life, but I do regret not having known you longer, Fenn." she says, quietly. 

"We've got a night," he replies.

Fenn might not have known before where they were going, but he's starting to figure it out. Mostly. In any case, Bo-Katan shifts closer next to him, close enough for their sides to touch, and Fenn finds himself cursing his armour, cutting him off from the warmth and presence of another person. 

Meeting his gaze, Bo-Katan now takes his hand, holding it with both of hers, above and below. Fenn realizes he must be leaning towards her because suddenly Bo-Katan's face is much, much closer, and her other hand has come up to stroke the close-shaved hair at the back of his head and - Fierfek, but the tone of this evening is shifting gears too fast for him to keep up with, and while his brain is stalling his body and face are siting dumb, some on you di'kut SAY something - 

And then she kisses him. 

It's just a press of lips, gentle and soft but not at all hesitant. Fenn flinches a moment and nearly forgets how to breathe, before sighing as he relaxes into her touch. It's nice, even if he has no idea how they got to this point, exactly. 

"I really, really hope you don't regret doing *that*," is all he can say, like a complete idiot, when she pulls away. 

"Not one bit," she chuckles, and kisses him again. This time, he kisses back. 

Fenn has no idea what this is, what unknown quantity they've just added into the already tangled mess of their strange relationship, but already he's a hyperspace jump and a half past caring. They are already two people out of time, out of options, in all likelihoods out of luck - but not yet out of hope, for themselves or for the future. 

It's more than enough for now.


End file.
